


Discovering Love in Reverse

by Elysium Requiem (Jade)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:09:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade/pseuds/Elysium%20Requiem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many different kinds of love in the world</p>
            </blockquote>





	Discovering Love in Reverse

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of a challenge. The prose are a little flowery in some parts, sorry.

There are many different kinds of love in the world. Most of us are lucky to experience just one kind in a life time. But some people get lucky and they learn of more, experience more. And with the life I was given, I guess Fate took pity on me. 

I never learned what it was like to be loved by parents in the unconditional fashion most kids have. My parents where taken from me when I was only a baby. In place of this infinite kind of love, Fate gave me a love of a different kind. 

 

**(1)**  
There is a love that stands like a glass house out in an open meadow. It catches the light of the sun, reflecting brilliant displays of colour dancing in the air, shifting through the grass. It is beautiful and captivating - ensnaring the mind with its surreal existence. It's glorious and dazzling to the eye of the beholder. But it is fragile, built on illusions and ideals; it cannot stand the weight of reality.

This is the kind of love I had for Cho.

She was beautiful and smart, a year older than I was.

She loved Quidditch the same way I did. 

I thought that I knew everything I could know about her. 

But I was young and foolish. And when my illusions were shattered under the weight of reality, I was left with nothing but shards in my hands.

 

 

**(2)**  
There is a love that comes like a flash of lightening across the dark sky. When it strikes it is the kind that will start like a wild fire in a dry season, consuming anything and everything in its path. It burns the body like a fever, igniting the soul, and devouring everything within its reach. It's the love of hot passions, hungry flesh, and selfish desires. But like any fire, without enough fuel its greed for more will leave nothing but ashes in its wake.

This is the kind of love I had with Ginny. 

We were young. And after the war was finally over we had the world within our reach and we wanted it all. So we took it and we made it ours. 

We had a passionate love affair and grand adventures.

We were consumed with our desire for one another and shut out the world around us when it didn’t fit into our short sighted plans.

We had lust and sex.

We took from each other what we wanted – when we wanted. 

But you can’t take something that should be given freely.

And like any other self-destructive behaviour the wildfire snuffed itself out.

When we sifted through the rubble and ashes that remained, we were able to scrape together a friendship that is still sometimes a little wild like dancing embers on the night wind.

 

 

**(3)**  
There is another kind of love. One that grows slowly over time, like a willow tree in a rich field. It starts out with a seed, planted deep within the earth where it is nurtured by the dark soil, light from the sun, and cool rain. It sets its hidden roots under the surface, gradually pushing its self up through the darkness, reaching towards the light. And steadily - year after year, season after season, through times of plenty and drought - it grows every ever larger and always stronger. 

Its roots reach deeper and deeper into the ground, forming a foundation that will support its weight, holding it fast through storms, reaching ever outward as it forms new channels through the earth. And once it is full grown - branches draping to trail on the ground, swaying with the breeze, creaking in the wind - it stands no matter the forces that it faces, bending with the rage of storms, bowing under the weight of snow, ready to come into bloom again when the gentle spring arrives. 

This is the kind of love I have with Hermione.

I hadn't taken notice of it as it grew from the tiny little seedling into a sheltering haven. 

But just because I hadn't realized what it was that had taken root between us, doesn't mean that it didn't exist. It isn't flashing and dazzling like a glass house in a sunny meadow, casting illusions a grandeur it doesn’t possess. It isn't short lived and selfish like a raging wildfire, greedily consuming everything in its path.

It’s knowing that I never had to look over my shoulder to know she was right there behind me or beside me no matter that we faced. 

It's sitting on the sofa with a good book and not feeling the silence stretch out into infinity between us. 

It's the words she says when she says nothing at all. 

It's the shape of her smile when she kisses me in the morning.

It's lying awake late at night - when any sane person would have long since been asleep - just counting her breaths and knowing that each lung full of air is wonderful and precious. 

It's listening to the beat of her heart and hearing the rhythm of my life echoed in the steady pace. 

It's the way that sometimes, I'll look across to her, and for just a brief instant in time my world will be consumed with wonder and awe, because she's looking back at me. She’s looking at me and while she sees Harry Potter: The Boy Who Lived, Destroyer of the Dark Lord, Saviour of the Wizarding World, she also see just Harry Potter. With all my faults and personality quirks, all the baggage I bring with me, she sees me under all that.

And she loves me anyway.


End file.
